Resumes and Career Search After College: How To Find Your Dream Job

You may ask what does Career counselling offer a new college grad? Once you have graduated college, you may have noticed that your career search in this job market isn’t what you had hoped. Due to the economic conditions, and competitive nature of the candidates you will find it tough out there! A resume becomes your marketing tool and reflects your personal brand in this new world of work. Here’s the question: does your resume clearly reflect your aptitudes or abilities, your strengths? Here is some resume advice.

Consider what Johnson O’Connor, developer of one of the first Aptitude batteries almost 90 years ago, said “The individual who knows his own aptitudes, and their relative strengths, chooses more intelligently among the world’s host of opportunities”.

In a recent workshop participants after first reviewing their results from The Highlands Aptitude Battery test and then participating in an exercise aimed at re-discovering and acknowledging one’s many skills-several participants exclaimed,

“Now I need to re-write my resume to really reflect what I do easily and well” or

“I never thought how my natural abilities are behind many of my skills” or

“I never thought there is a difference between abilities and skills”.

“I always thought they were the same” noted a 28- year old manager”.

Like many college grads in career search situations, there is a confusion between Skills and Abilities. Abilities are what you are hard-wired to do easily, almost automatically, while skills, what you are trained to do, can complement strong abilities or supplement weaker ones. When one combines an ability with a skill training then you have excellence.

Take a look at your resume and ask yourself the question: do your natural abilities shine in your marketing tool? Does your emerging personal brand build on your natural talents?